Current wireless cellular systems are designed to serve user terminals and their applications, in order to allow the continuous streaming of data (e.g., voice and/or video) during a communications session. For these types of applications, when a communications link between a user terminal and a base station is enabled, the communications link is expected to last for a relatively long period of time. Additionally, setting up one or more channels for a communications link between a mobile terminal and a base station may require the mobile terminal and the base station to send and receive various control and signaling data prior to starting a streaming session (e.g. signaling procedures for traffic channel access). Once the communications link is established, other signaling protocols, such as scheduling protocols, may be used to avoid signal interference with other data transmissions. Furthermore, even when a user terminal enters an “idle mode” (i.e., when no data is being transmitted) in order to reduce the amount of signaling that takes place during a communications session, the user terminal may be required to send and receive various control and signaling data prior to entering an “active mode”. These control and signaling procedures may require a substantial amount of network resources.
In contrast to user terminals, Machine Type Communications (MTC) devices and their applications may only need to transmit a relatively small amount of data during a relatively short amount of time (as compared to data streaming). Additionally, MTC devices stay in idle mode and rarely change locations. Because MTC devices may only require relatively short data transmissions, and due to their stationary nature, requiring MTC devices to undertake the aforementioned control and signaling procedures may be a very inefficient use of existing network resources. In many instances, the network resources required for a MTC device data transmission is less than the resources required to establish a communications link between the MTC device and a base station. Furthermore, if there are many MTC devices in a base station's service area, the base station may have to handle numerous MTC device transmissions in short period of time, leading to cell overloaded conditions.